Madam Speaker, I appreciate my colleague's talking about how the health care system is overburdened and there is too much bureaucracy. The College of Family Physicians of Canada has cited that approximately 250,000 disability tax credit forms were processed in 2022. It estimates that this amounts to about 250,000 hours of physician time lost, and a million patient visits as well, just for physicians to fill out disability tax credit forms.
The budget amount is $10 million to help people with up to $150 each to do the form. Would it not just make sense for the government to recognize that if somebody qualifies as having a disability in their province or territory, they would automatically qualify for the disability tax credit? This would save taxpayers $10 million and save a million visits for patients so doctors could actually be helping serve the Canadian public and taking the burden off our health care system.
Does my colleague agree that this is the kind of innovation we need right now and that we need to stop wasting doctors' time and taxpayers' money?